Message 300 from *News (#123):
Date:     Thu May 16 11:00:54 1996 PDT
From:     Haakon (#2)
To:       *News (#123)
Subject:  LambdaMOO Takes Another Direction

On December 9, 1992, Haakon posted 'LambdaMOO Takes A New Direction'
(LTAND).  Its intent was to relieve the wizards of the responsiblity for
making social decisions, and to shift that burden onto the players
themselves.  It indicated that the wizards would thenceforth refrain from
making social decisions, and serve the MOO only as technicians. Over the
course of the past three and a half years, it has become obvious that this
was an impossible ideal: The line between 'technical' and 'social' is not
a clear one, and never can be.  The harassment that ensues each time we
fail to achieve the impossible is more than we are now willing to bear.

So, we now acknowledge and accept that we have unavoidably made some
social decisions over the past three years, and inform you that we hold
ourselves free to do so henceforth.

1. We Are Reintroducing Wizardly Fiat
=====================================
In particular, we henceforth explicitly reserve the right to make
decisions that will unquestionably have social impact.  We also now
acknowledge that any technical decision may have social implications; we
will no longer attempt to justify every action we take.

Players will still have a voice, however.  Your input is essential.  We
will keep our existing institutions for now, with the modifications
described below, but we encourage you to develop ideas for replacing these
institutions (as will be described in section 2).


a. Petitions
------------
The petition system will remain in its current form, with the following
change:

  In cases where difficulties arise that were unanticipated by the
  vetting process, we reserve the right to re-interpret and/or
  explicitly veto any clause of any passed ballot.

We will continue to vet petitions, in order to minimize the use of ballot
veto, and we will continue to do so in terms of the existing vetting
criteria in most cases.  However, we will not rule out the possibilities
of vetting being denied for other reasons, or of the vetting criteria
being revised by fiat.

b. Arbitration
--------------
We explicitly reserve

 (*) the right to veto any Arbitrator decision, particularly one that
     significantly impairs the ability of the wizards to do their jobs.

 (*) the right to veto any Arbitration Change Proposal that is clearly
     not a "minor change" in the spirit of *Ballot:Arbitration (#50392)
     or that significantly impairs the ability of the wizards to do
     their jobs.

These may be temporary measures, as we hope to facilitate revision or
replacement of Arbitration so that it may more adequately meet the needs
of the community.

c. Wizardly Actions with Social Implications
--------------------------------------------
The wizards will no longer refrain from taking actions that may have
social implications.  In three and a half years, no adequate mechanism has
been found that prevents disruptive players from creating an intolerably
hostile working environment for the wizards.  The LTAND ideal that we
might somehow limit ourselves solely to technical decisions has proven to
be untenable.


2. Alternatives to Wizards Making Social Decisions
==================================================
We encourage you, the players, to devise new mechanisms that will help
minimize the need for the wizards to make unilateral social decisions.
Several mechanisms, most notably the Arbitration system, seem less than
ideal for the purpose, yet are too deeply entrenched to be changed with
the petition system.  We would like to try new mechanisms and to enable
more radical changes than the current petition system will allow.  We
would like the players to propose ideas for major new institutions, and
ways to select among the proposals.  We hope this will introduce a new
dynamism to LambdaMOO that will allow us to find better solutions to some
of our more fundamental problems.

Similarly, we hope to facilitate an overhaul of the current petition and
ballot system if the players want it.

Do keep in mind, though, that we cannot keep LambdaMOO running without the
wizards Haakon has selected.  "Cyberspace" and "new social reality"
rhetoric aside, so long as the MOO is located on a single RL machine at a
single RL site subject to RL laws and liabilities, there will be those
deemed responsible for the use of that hardware.  Part of the need for
administrators is also inherent in the LambdaMOO security model and the
organization of LambdaCore, while some of this need is a consequence of
various quirks of LambdaMOO society (e.g., the correspondence between RL
identities and MOO identities needing to remain secret and yet the need
for someone to maintain it).  While we might consider ways to decentralize
some of these tasks, the fact remains that we simply can't decentralize
everything.  We are still open to your suggestions for ways to
decentralize what we can.

Suggestions such as:

 (*)  persons not well trusted by Haakon might be granted wizard bits
      as a result of popular election, or
 (*)  we might set up a "wizard machine" to run arbitrary
      wizardly code with NO human intervention at all

are not acceptable, however.  There may be site administrators somewhere
who will accept the risks involved in implementing these ideas, but we
will not.


3. Rejection of the New Direction?
==================================
We realize that not everyone will agree that this is the best new
direction LambdaMOO might take.  We don't doubt that some of the polemics
among you will be able to come up with a different slant, e.g. (just to
save you some trouble),

   wizardly blackmail
   military coup
   martial law
   nuclear terrorism

Some of you may find the new direction so disagreeable that you will
consider ways to force an end to the new direction or ways to make the
wizards' lives miserable because of it. Instead of making the use of civil
disobedience or wizard harassment be the necessary means for shutting down
LambdaMOO, we will accept a *simple majority* decision of the following
form:

  Any eligible voter may author a "shutdown" petition.  This will be a
  pre-vetted petition with a specific, fixed wording.  Should the
  petition reach ballot stage (by acquiring the usual signature
  threshold), a vote will be held to decide whether LambdaMOO should be
  shut down.  If the number of YES (we should shut down) votes equals
  or exceeds the number of NO (we should not shut down) votes
  received, LambdaMOO will be shut down after an 8-week grace period.
  (Note, only one "shutdown" petition may be active at a time.)

Shutdown petitions will be implemented at the earliest opportunity.

4. The New Direction
====================
We hope that LambdaMOO will become a more dynamic and enjoyable place for
the wizards and the players.  We do not want to discourage lively debate
or to deprive players of a voice, and we encourage all of you to develop
new ideas, mechanisms, and social policies, so as to minimize the need for
direct wizardly social intervention as much as possible.

-The Wizards of LambdaMOO

--------------------------